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The Church of Scotland was revitalized between 1820 and 1830. Within the Church, there was a new awareness that the number of parish churches was insufficient for the needs of the population. With this comes the mounting theological debate regarding the Westminster Confession of Faith. This begun to create tensions within Scottish Calvinism. In 1829, the Church confronted the new challenge of radical Voluntaryism—the sustained agitation by a group of Scottish Dissenters for the disestablishment of the national Church. Chalmers was deeply distressed by the 1839 Brechin and Stewartson...

The Church of Scotland was revitalized between 1820 and 1830. Within the Church, there was a new awareness that the number of parish churches was insufficient for the needs of the population. With this comes the mounting theological debate regarding the Westminster Confession of Faith. This begun to create tensions within Scottish Calvinism. In 1829, the Church confronted the new challenge of radical Voluntaryism—the sustained agitation by a group of Scottish Dissenters for the disestablishment of the national Church. Chalmers was deeply distressed by the 1839 Brechin and Stewartson decisions. The dream of nearly a lifetime had been cruelly mocked; the effort and sacrifice of the Church Extension campaign had been rendered meaningless. This chapter relates that after the failure of his campaign, fissures began appearing within Chalmers's Evangelical ascendancy in the Church of Scotland.